


To Make Kindling of the Tree of Knowledge

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: A Field In England
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8597665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: World without end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am not involved in the production of A Field In England, and this school is not involved in the production of A Field In England. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

It's with strange affection that O'Neill that touches you. Perhaps that, as much as fear, is why you let yourself be led. It's a peculiar thing to find the membrane of your oneness broken. So few people do. You don't think that you hold yourself apart, make yourself untouchable. You just seem not to invite it, as some people wander the world almost as relics, inviting the hands of those who wish some personal relation to what they hold within. In his tent, he stands behind you, holds the mirror before you both.  
“Will you look?” he asks, his voice dry and heavy in your ear, like incense made of sound.  
“I cannot,” you venture.  
“Will you look?” he asks again, closer, now, having somehow placed the mirror in your hands without your realizing it, his own hands over yours. You raise your eyes to the ceiling, let your gaze soften, your vision blur. You will not look. You will not see.  
“Look,” he hisses, now, and takes away one of his hands. You expect to be struck or somehow compelled, but the hand on the back of your head is a gentle pressure. It's the touch one gives to a frightened animal. You don't even notice your head being turned down, your eyes coming to rest on the mirror.  
“There, now,” says O'Neill, in a honeyed tone you've never heard before. He is, you realize with no small surprise, no small pleasure, no small surprise at your pleasure, pleased, “You will look. You will see.”  
“I will not,” you say, trying to sound defiant, but only succeeding in approximating a young child in a sulk.  
“You will,” says O'Neill, hand moving down your neck, “You will see.”  
You start. This is something you hadn't considered. Suddenly, there's another person in the tent, with you and O'Neill. It must be, you think, the mirror, itself. And it wants you to look into it. It wants to be known by you.  
It's then that you do see, with a long sigh, drawn, it seems, not from your own store of breath, but from the earth, itself, brought up through the column of your body. It's the earth that you see- but you're now rooted to it. You've become a tree.  
“But what fruit shall I bear?” you ask. Your voice is a thread of silver, shivering, stitched on the air.  
“What fruit, indeed?” says O'Neill absently. He sounds so far away, as though calling to you over a vast plain. His hand is at the small of your back. He could be all that's holding you up. You could fall- a tree felled by a bolt from the sky.  
The mirror's lost its shine. It no longer reflects, but consumes. It's the black of the earth, the dust to which all return. You're returning, now. It's coming. It's coming for you.  
Now!- you're dead. Or in such a state that death is become both conclusion long in waiting and irrelevant trifle. Time is heaped upon you in quantities that it would crush the life from you like wine from the grape, if there were life left to spill. You're nothing. You're dust. You're the earth, itself. You feel the powdered gold of sunlight fall upon you. You feel the clouds shed their coat of rain. Growing things pierce your flesh with their roots, and drag open your skin, reaching for the sun. Beasts and men tread upon your face. They die, and you embrace them greedily. All things are yours, in death.  
A voice! “Stop talking nonsense, Whitehead, and do as you're told.”  
The earth doesn't take orders, you think disdainfully. You'll stay here a while, you think. You'll watch the centuries unfold. You'll stay here, as the earth, letting men spill their blood into you. You'll never again be hungry or untouched. For you are all things.  
The war ends. The king falls. You feel the holes dug for the bodies. Bodies fill you like new-grown teeth crowding into a mouth. Another man rules the people who live and die on you. One man's the same as another. They all come to you. You're bored. You sleep.  
Awake to cacophony. It's stone and fire, an endless sweep of hard and hot. Your body's changed, pasted over with road and edifice, dug out to suck the the precious things beneath your skin. There's more metal than you've ever seen, thrown down and bolted to your hide. It hurts. You're suddenly aware that you're screaming. What, though, does it sound like when the earth screams?  
Tails of carriages rocket across new track at speeds unimaginable. What happened to you, as you slumbered, in your dreams? The air smells of combustion. Is it war? Another war? Is it always war, now? Armageddon, perhaps? You wonder this with detached amusement. The pain is making you giddy.  
“Never mind about that,” murmurs the voice through your screams. You may never stop screaming.  
You're laden with construction. It's made to live by chemical fires. There are voices on the air. None of them, though, is as clear as the voice that speaks to you. Calling you names, now, cursing you. Is it the voice of God? Fire grips you, floods your veins, and you shake as though in a fit. Something holds you steady. What holds up the earth? You know things, now. Things that you're told by the voices on the air. You hear portents of death tearing through foreign lands, where the young men are now sent. You think of old stories about youths shipped elsewhere to feed a monster, to an island far away. Is that happening again? What head has the monster, now?  
Of course, all things are always happening. You're aware of several of them at once:   
One- the young men are being sent away, leaving you feeling cold, denied the comfort of their blood when they die.  
Two- no sooner is one war finished that another is beginning, in many places at once.  
Three- a cloud of fire erupts far from here, but it blazes through you, too, a million stars like hot needles piercing you and branding you with new and terrible knowledge.  
Four- you are now always aglow, and night is become extinct.  
Five- scholars are touching your bones.  
Six- you have a sudden need to run.  
“Oh, no,” you hear, “not so fast.” There's a weight upon you, holding you fast to the ground. You're made to stand. A rope is thrown around you, and you're tethered.  
“Now, you may run,” says the voice, “Run all you like.”  
It must be a trick. You move slowly, through curtains as though approaching a stage. The sun strikes your face, silvering your gaze. The sun kisses your cheek. When were you last touched with such kindness? Overcome, you fall to your knees. Blood is upon the grass. Does it, too, fall from the heavens?  
The urge to run is upon you again. There's something of great import stuck in the earth, here. Stuck in you, is it not? You must go. Find it. It needs to be extracted. It's a splinter of gold in your hide, a gaudy torment.  
Is it something you want to give them, though? The name of O'Neill comes to you as you run. As do the names of the plants you tread underfoot. The names of those in your party. You have a body. It's been alive for thirty years. You have a name. You're just a man.  
But you know things that no man alive could know. You were the earth. If all things are always happening, you must still be.  
They start to dig. You flinch. A tremendous wave of loss comes to you. You're empty.  
You shuffle your feet, feel the earth beneath them. It whispers a promise to you. All things will return to you, eventually. All things are yours. It says.


End file.
